As I write this entry, the police and young anarchists are fighting in the streets of Copenhagen. I like to think of Denmark as the one place in the world where people and their government talk to each other and work out compromises that preserve convention and allow gradual change. I guess something has changed if, as described in this Guardian article, the streets of Copenhagen look like Belfast in the worst days of the troubles.

On behalf of a conservative "Christian" group that has bought Ungdomshuset, an anarchist squat that has been in business for decades, the police seem to have been willing to break the Danish social compact and violently evict the young squatters. Both the US and Denmark have long had a religious split between those who see religion (mainly Christianity) as essentially a form of authority and those who see it as a mandate for reconcilitation. In the US, these factions have burst into active warfare over and over again, but in Denmark, truces have been reached. Let's watch this uncharacteristic violent outburst in a compassionate spirit and envision some way, however unlikely, that it can be resolved in a just and peaceful way.